Snapshots of Time XIV
by hummerhouse
Summary: Momentary glimpses of life, captured and placed into an album. Drabble sets. Some stories may contain TCest.


Snapshots of Time XIV

 **Strike**

"I hate it when the sanitation guys go on strike," Raph griped as he and his brothers sloshed through the sewers. "If it ain't the stink from garbage stacking up in the alleys, it's the piles blocking the maintenance ladders."

They rounded a bend in the tunnel and stopped when they spotted an almost solid wall of garbage bags directly in their path. The uppermost bags were unbroken, but the ones at the bottom of the pile had split and spilled their contents.

"Gross," Mikey said, his lips curling back in disgust.

"I don't enjoy this any more than you guys do, but we can't leave it this way," Leo said firmly. "These access points are too close to our home and if we need them in an emergency, I don't want to get bogged down by a mountain of trash."

"Why must people attempt to dispose of their uncollected garbage by tossing it down into the sewers?" Don asked, his question mostly rhetorical.

Raph chose to answer anyway. With a grin he said, "'Cause they figure that's what the sewers are for."

"Maybe they think this stuff will float off somewhere," Leo said as he grabbed a bag and handed it to Mikey, who relayed it to Raph, who in turn gave it to Don.

Turning to set the bag behind him, Don said, "You would think that the smell wafting up through the grates would tell them otherwise."

Another bag made its way down their line as the brothers worked to clear a path to the ladder. "I feel bad for the men who'll have to come down here and get this stuff out," Leo said.

"Ain't gonna happen until the city and sanitation union reach a deal," Raph said. "Then it'll be a bunch of temporary hires who'll get paid about eighteen bucks an hour ta do this crap job."

"And look at us, doing it for free," Mikey said with false cheeriness. He did a quick backward hop to avoid having his foot drenched when the bag Leo had just handed him sprung a leak. "Hey Donny, why don't you invent a motor that runs on garbage, like that guy did in 'Back to the Future'?"

Raph turned to hand another bag off to Don and noticed the thoughtful expression on the genius' face. When his brother didn't immediately take the bag, Raph said, "Earth ta Don, pick up the pace."

"Oh," Don said, accepting the trash and tossing it behind him. "You know, the only thing preventing the invention of a viable methane fueled engine is the length of time it takes for the putrescible materials to break down. Now if I could create something that would speed up that process, perhaps by increasing the size of the microbial populations . . . ."

In a flash, Don whipped out a battered notebook and moved the rubber band that held it shut on a pencil stub. Walking a few paces away from his brothers, he sank down on a portion of dry ground and began furiously scribbling in the book.

Raph spun around to glare at Mikey. "Ya' just had ta say that, didn't ya'? Couldn't ya' have kept your mouth shut until we got done with this? Now it's gonna be a three turtle job 'cause Don's off in genius crazy land."

"Sorry," Mikey said contritely. "I forgot."

Don suddenly looked up at them, his expression slightly manic. "All I need to make this work is some trash, the more rotten the better. Could you guys grab a few bags and . . . ."

Before he could finish, all three of his brothers shouted simultaneously.

"NO!"

 **Time Out**

"Michelangelo!"

Mikey winced at the perturbed tone in his oldest brother's voice but held his ground. Raph and Don had fled to the garage to avoid the fall-out and Master Splinter had retired to his room after telling the three younger turtles to handle the problem themselves.

 _"You are a team,"_ their father had said. _"The leader leads but it is not your duty to follow blindly. If you believe that your leader's choices will have grave consequences, then it is incumbent upon you to bring that to his attention, in whatever manner is most likely to work."_

They debated which of them should talk to Leo and Mikey had won the dubious honor. Raph would only manage to tick off their brother and wind up fighting with him. Don had the most soothing manner but as a natural follower would probably cave if Leo gave him a direct order.

That left it up to Mikey. He hated it when Leo got in one of his 'moods' because it always took an act of Congress to snap him out of it.

"Miche . . . there you are!" Leo exclaimed, bolting down the stairs and storming towards his brother. "Where are my masks?"

Mikey crossed his arms. "What makes you think that I know what you're talking about?"

"All of my masks are missing," Leo said, stepping in close and assuming his most intimidating posture, "including the one I took off when I got into the shower. That has 'Mikey prank' written all over it. Give them back and find Raph and Donny, we're going on a training run."

"We took a vote and decided against it," Mikey told him. "You haven't let up on us in two weeks. All we do is practice, eat, go on training runs, and sleep. You're turning into a tyrant again."

"What did you say?" Leo asked in something close to a growl.

"Tyrant," Mikey responded distinctly. "You're following that same pattern dude and you need a reality check or time out or something. Weren't you supposed to be enlightened when you came back from training with the Ancient One? Every time we go on a mission and there's a hiccup in the plans you backslide. The odds are that no matter how much we train sometimes things aren't going to go our way. The rest of us deal with it philosophically; why can't you?"

Leo glared at him and Mikey stared back, undaunted. After a moment Leo's expression began to shift, the aggravated lines between his eyes flattening out.

"You always say exactly what you think, don't you Mikey?" Leo asked.

Mikey shrugged, relaxing his stance. "It's the best way I know of to avoid misunderstandings," he said. "You do know we aren't going anywhere with you until we're sure you've snapped out of your funk, right?"

"By learning to deal with it philosophically," Leo teased, all signs of his previous intensity gone from his demeanor.

With a smile, Mikey said, "Gotta toss out the big words to throw you off your game."

"So if I'm not allowed to go out, how do you suggest I entertain myself this evening?" Leo asked suggestively.

"Who said you have to entertain yourself?" Mikey countered, reaching out to push Leo towards the stairs.

"Isn't physical exercise part of my ban?" Leo asked, grinning lecherously at his brother as he followed him.

"Nope, just training. Come on up to my room," Mikey said invitingly, starting up the stairs. "I'll bet we can find something creative to do with all of your masks that I've got stashed in there."

"Oh I'm certain we can," Leo agreed, darting after the wriggling tail just in front of him.

 **Double Cross**

"Shell," Donatello murmured in a low voice, staring into the open panel housed within the cylindrical tube on the ground in front of him.

The way he said the word conveyed Don's intense agitation more than the word itself did. "What's wrong, Donny?" Leo asked.

"The timer," Don replied. "Opening the door activated it just as Bishop warned us it would, but it's counting down from five minutes, not twenty."

"Maybe he just got it wrong?" Mikey hazarded to guess.

Don shook his head. "This is his bomb, he would know how it worked."

"He lied ta us," Raph spat out. "Tell me again why we fucking believed him? That bastard is probably sitting in the back of his limo having a good laugh at our expense. We shouldn't have given him that computer thingy with all the alien tech info on it until we were out of here."

"We only did that because he said the guys who stole the stuff from him took this bomb and some hostages," Mikey said. "What we shouldn't have done was come in here when we saw that the room was empty."

A loud banging made Mikey look over to see Raph pounding on the heavy metal door that they had come through. "It's locked damn it! There ain't even a handle on this side."

"Donny, can you do anything with that bomb?" Leo asked, his voice as calm as always.

Letting out a puff of air, Don answered, "I could have in twenty minutes, not in three minutes, twenty nine seconds."

Mikey ran along the walls of the small room they'd been locked into, periodically knocking on them. "Maybe there's a secret entrance somewhere."

Don stood up. "Don't count on it. Bishop went to elaborate lengths to make sure he'd be rid of us in a way that would preserve our DNA and cut us open at the same time."

Raph began cursing, his vocabulary rich and full of feeing. Leo remained unruffled, walking over to the door and bending down to examine the locking mechanism.

"Forget it, Leo," Raph said, breaking off from his tirade. "There ain't even a keyhole in the damn door. If I get reincarnated, the first thing I'm gonna do is tear that double crosser a new one."

"Actually, I rather expected he would do that," Leo said calmly, waving Raph away from the door. "Donny, toss me one of those bolts you pulled out of the bomb panel."

Don leaned down to get one from the floor and flipped it in Leo's direction. "You knew that Bishop was going to double cross us?" Don asked.

"A zebra doesn't change its stripes," Leo said, taking several steps back away from the door. "I did have a fleeting thought that he could have taken on this mission himself and didn't need our help. The only reason I agreed to do it when he called was there was a fifty-fifty chance that civilians were in danger. He wouldn't have been overly concerned about their welfare."

"Just like he ain't overly concerned about ours," Raph observed dryly.

"What the heck are you doing, Leo?" Mikey asked, stepping up close to Don.

"Cover your eyes and you'll find out," Leo said just before throwing the bolt directly at the spot where the latch fit into the door frame.

As soon as the bolt hit there was a loud explosion and tiny fragments of metal blew into the room. This was immediately followed by the squeak of hinges as the door swung open.

"How did you do that?" Mikey demanded, surprised.

"I'll never trust Bishop," Leo said, leading the way out of the death trap. "On our way in I stuffed the lock with plastic explosive when he wasn't looking. When he shut the door on us I knew my instincts were right."

"Forty-seven seconds," Don said as the brothers broke into a run.

"Let's go find Bishop and kick his ass," Raph suggested.

"Yes let's," Leo concurred, seconding the motion much to his brother's delight.


End file.
